


in spite of myself

by blushymika



Series: Tender Ash [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Falling In Love, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21503107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushymika/pseuds/blushymika
Summary: Move on. Better yourself. Love him more than he thinks he deserves.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Tender Ash [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1383427
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	in spite of myself

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't had time to write in awhile, but i've been wanting to write something sad yet tender for these two.. i love them so much i'm sorry about the sap and i'm not even sure if any of this makes sense!!

It is the anger and loss clouding Elijah’s eyes that force Valentine’s mind to continue connecting the pieces of the puzzle, his dead family.

His mother’s beauty, a once vibrant canvas, has been tainted with splatters of death. Her fingers, Valentine remembers, are delicate as they comb through his hair. He is eight years old when he wonders how such softness exists within someone like his mother, a woman who carries the burden of the entire world on her shoulders.

He is too young to understand what lies in between black and white, but he does know that it is his mother’s kindness, in spite of everything, that makes her so wonderful, yet so unreal. 

She whispers something in his ear. It’s soft, almost like her own pillow, the pillow that Valentine falls asleep on every night. Her voice, wind chimes, even when she cries.

When his mother yells, a violent gust of wind sweeps through their home. The instrumental metal rods beat against each other almost competitively. They want to thrash. They want to scream.

But they can only go so far.

Valentine’s mother is fierce, but she is still his mother. She is still the woman who kisses her youngest son on his forehead and she is the girl that tells her husband that she wants to name her son Valentine.

It’s a beautiful name and Valentine wants to love it—he needs to for his mother—but he doesn’t. He can’t.

_“Why are you always so hard on yourself?”_

His father, on the other hand, is a coward. 

There are memories of gambling and using toys instead of coins. There’s laughter and there are rules to the game that Valentine can still remember, but his father’s face is blurry and Valentine blames himself.

His mother scolds her husband with that voice of hers, the one that holds all the love in the world and is the same one that is as sharp as the sword that hangs from their wall.

The man in question shoots up from his chair with a smile on his wrinkled face as he apologizes profusely and ends their little game. Valentine remembers calling him a scaredy-cat. He was about to win for the Gods’ sake.

Although maybe he was being a bit harsh with his word choice. Being a coward and being a scaredy-cat are two entirely different things, but now that he’s older, he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to use the latter. Only children are allowed to say such a thing, and Valentine isn’t a child. He hasn’t been a kid in awhile now.

What does being a child mean? What does it entail? Is it possible to go back though, to reverse time?

When his brother talks, Valentine’s heart aches. His chest is tight. His ribs form a cage around what is most vulnerable, keeping it hidden, but sometimes he wishes that it wasn’t there. It holds him back from something, something amazing yet unknown. 

And all Elijah talks about is death. 

“Do you remember what happened, Valentine?” he would ask. “It was so hot then… so hot that it could burn someone—some people—alive.”

It’s not fair. It isn’t right.

It doesn’t sit well inside Valentine, a child who never liked to be treated as one.

Being able to cook and defend oneself with a sword at such a young age are two things, but the tarnishing of innocence through murder is not a part of childhood.

At least, it shouldn’t be, but Elijah never stops talking. 

“Do you remember the fire? Do you still remember them?” Elijah asks again, but with every passing day, it sounds more and more like an order that demands a response, an answer, anything that will calm the chaos stirring within him. 

Valentine’s answers come in the forms of shaking and nodding his head. His tongue and throat had dried up a long time ago, taking away his words and replacing them with silence.

It is the silence that submerges Valentine into his thoughts that he keeps locked away with a key. 

It is the silence that whispers notions into his ear.

It is the deafening silence that propels Valentine to selfishly run away from his brother because he was never interested in remembrance in the first place. He has had his time to grieve, but there must be more to his journey than fire. In spite of how he tries his best to remember—it is love that drives him to do so—he mustn’t dwell on the gentleness of his mother’s heart or the playfulness of his father’s personality. 

It is a different type of love that pushes him to chase an impossible life outside death and an unconditional love that will never reach its end, no matter how far a coffin is buried underneath the ground.

It is love, something amazing that has to be discovered, that leads him to a love that is louder than Elijah’s grief and quieter than Valentine’s own silence.

It is now, when he is nineteen years old, that he learns about a kind of silence that echoes for the last time through a once lonely home when a war has ended.

A war. A terrible war full of flames and loss and dread and grief, but it’s okay, it’s okay…

“It’s okay.”

It’s over now.

And Valentine grabs Sage’s hand without hesitation because he wants to believe.

He wants to be naïve. He wants to dream, despite not being able to pay the price of doing so. He believes anyways—he has to try—and places his trust in the complex wonders of life because they gave him Sage, the calm after the storm.

Valentine kisses him with meaning, with connotations of devotion (“I want to spend so much time with you. So much.”) and love (“Tell me everything. I want to hear it.”)

He kisses Sage in spite of himself, in spite of his selfishness that sent him running away from the life that his brother wanted for him.

But it is also his selfishness that has placed Valentine here, beside Sage and in bed with him and receiving a love that will never run out from a person he doesn’t deserve.

Valentine wants too much, and he particularly wants things he can’t have or doesn’t deserve. He wants company, friends even, because he’s always been a protector.

He doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice. He doesn’t want to be twelve years old again, too weak and too fragile, and leave someone he could never protect.

In spite of himself, Valentine wants to do something good, something out of love in this new life that he has worked so hard for.

His determination has brought him here too, rewarding him with a comfortable silence that is only broken by several kisses and the occasional peal of laughter. 

But does he deserve it, after all he’s done?

His mother’s voice inside his head, accompanied by Sage’s too this time, ask him again: “Why are you so hard on yourself?”

Valentine still doesn’t have an answer, still haunted by the silence, only questions that he keeps locked away with his thoughts and now Sage has the key.

He tries not to think about it.

“Stop it already,” Sage insists with a smile from underneath him. “You’re covering me in them.”

Happiness swells inside Valentine’s heart. A childish sensation explodes inside his chest, which motivates him to say, “But they look good on you.”

He receives a lopsided smile as a response. “At this rate, I’m going to have to wear a turtleneck for a few days.”

Valentine’s lips meet Sage’s for a few moments, content sighs leaving their mouths right before they part. 

“That won’t help,” Valentine tells him. “You look amazing in turtlenecks.”

“Well, that backfired,’ Sage remarks as he sighs. “You’re practically eating me. I’ll have no skin left by the end of the night.”

This time, Valentine giggles and he leans forward, making sure that their foreheads don’t crash into each other; he’s learned from experience. “Sage, they’re hickeys. They’re not gonna kill you.”

“Fine, but I know that you’re gonna be the death of me. For sure.”

“Yeah! Duh! What did you expect?”

Sage’s hand comes to rest on the back of Valentine’s head. “This,” he says simply, like Valentine is just another one of his riddles. 

“I don’t—Be clear about things for once.”

“I’m trying,” Sage answers. “You’re not that good at it either.”

Valentine opens his mouth to protest, only to be stopped by Sage’s hand on his lips.

“I know what you’re gonna say,” he mumbles and there is something in Sage’s eyes that Valentine can recognize like it’s the back of his own hand because he carries it in his own eyes as well—love. “I know you’re better at it than I am. The whole...feelings and everything. But let me try. Just this once. I want you to know something.

“I like you a lot, even after everything that has happened. After I told you about myself, and even after you told me about yourself too. I like you in spite of all of that. And I’m not sure, but I think you still think about your brother. Valentine, I like you so much, so please don’t be so hard on yourself. I don’t know how else to say it. I care about you and so does everyone else. We care about you because you’re you and not anyone else. Does that make sense?”

Sage’s eyes dart back and forth, focusing on everything that isn’t Valentine. His face is red too. He knows it is. He blinks, realizing that he’s too embarrassed, so he places his other hand over his eyes.

At first, Valentine doesn’t know what to do, say, or think. He wants to tell Sage something too, something that he can’t put into words because he isn’t a genius and because he can only say so much before he bursts into tears. His heart throbs, finally free from its prison. Sage feels like a world without war, only peace. No death. No fire, only the fires inside their hearts.

In other words, utterly and absolutely impossible. 

Valentine chuckles, taking the chance to wipe away his tears.

How embarrassing. 

He closes his eyes and kisses the palm of Sage’s hand, making the kissing noises obnoxiously loud. 

Sage lowers his hand, keeping the one over Valentine’s mouth in place.

“I bet you’re rolling your eyes right now,” Valentine guesses.

“I am,” Sage confirms, getting up slightly to wrap his arms around the older boy so that his face is in his chest. “I like you a lot.”

Valentine swears to himself that he’s not going to sob into his boyfriend’s chest. Instead, he pulls Sage closer and he whispers, “I like you too. Forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! <3


End file.
